​Hidetaka Miyazaki decided to begin a brand new video game project. Miyazaki is the creator of Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 and has worked as the director on the original, but won't be directly involved in the creation of the recently announced sequel.

“I will not be involved in the actual development of Dark Souls II,” he said. “I want to clarify that I will be a supervisor, not the actual director or producer.”

Well, at least the guy's supervising DS 2, but I must admit we're really curious about his next endeavor.

I think the Dark Souls universe -- much moreso than the Demon's Souls universe -- has some decent potential as an on-going franchise, so I was very pleasantly surprised when it was announced they would be continuing its storyline with a sequel. I hope Miyazaki's departure doesn't poison the well, so to speak.

It shouldn't. Although history has shown that game franchises do, in fact, change when key people leave.

God of War 3 - not done by the God of War 2 team.
Dragon Age 2 - lead designer left, don't think I should say more than that.
Ninja Gaiden 3 - again, series creator leaves and the game turns out to be nowhere near as good as the original and NG 2 (i.e. they took a massive dump and just ruined it)

I guess since the he left, they want to continue with something that has depth and popularity (as this took off well given the multiplatform). The lore in the game is definitely interesting and seeing what else they can do will be neat.